Friday, May 2, 2008

Actors Performing Badly on Purpose

Slings and Arrows. Dir. Peter Wellington. Perf. Martha Burns, Paul Gross, Don McKellar, Mark McKinney, Oliver Dennis, Susan Coyne, Stephen Ouimette, and Catherine Fitch. 2003-2006 (Three Seasons). DVD. Acorn Media, 2006-2007. Really, this is about actors being directed badly. The image is from a production of Romeo and Juliet directed by Darren Nichols, the incredibly and wonderfully horrific director in Slings and Arrows. They are dressed in costumes made with iron bands and with chess pawns on their heads to indicate man’s inhumanity to man—or something. Terrifically bad idea. Marvelous.

I needed to remind myself that there are really wonderful Shakespearean usages out there. I needed to get the “I think I used one yesterday” nonsense out of my mind.

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Bardfilmis normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilmis a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:

KJ is a professor of English and Literature at a small Christian liberal arts college. In addition to courses entitled “Shakespeare” and “Introduction to Shakespeare,” he teaches a course called “Shakespeare and Film.” Recently, he developed a course titled “Modern Shakespearean Fiction.” Shakespeare is also integrated into nearly all his other courses, including courses on the Literature of Food and the Literature of Humor. Additionally, he is the author of Bardfilm: The Shakespeare and Film Microblog. But you may have known that already.